Northam's a piece of shit who's been running crypto-racist ads, but he's better than Gillespie, which is about all that can be said for him. Typical democrat.

Meanwhile, downticket, you have people like Danica Roem unseating the author of that bill, and DSA member/open socialist Lee Carter unseating the republican Majority Whip with zero Democratic support. Carter's already got a fifth of the state House backing a statewide single payer bill, too.

TA wrote:Northam's a piece of shit who's been running crypto-racist ads, but he's better than Gillespie, which is about all that can be said for him. Typical democrat.

The hell of it is, he didn't have to. I'm sure the justification is "well he had to do that to win," but...nine fucking points. He didn't.

I keep going back to that bit in March where Lewis talks about the riot at the '64 convention. He says the worst part about Johnson siding with the violent racists was that it didn't make any difference; he still won in a landslide, but he still lost the South. He could have done the right thing and it wouldn't have cost him shit. Same deal with Northam: nine points; he didn't have to cuddle any racists to win.

But, what the hell -- he's not Gillespie. That's good enough for now. The left wing of the party is putting pressure on him already, so hopefully that means he's not going to get a pass on the awful shit just because he's a Democrat. I saw some people who were angry at Our Revolution for criticizing him right ahead of the vote, but...again, nine points; I think they made the right call: they didn't hurt his chances of winning, but they made it clear that people aren't just going to be quiet about the whole racism thing just because he has a "D" next to his name.

Meanwhile, downticket, you have people like Danica Roem unseating the author of that bill, and DSA member/open socialist Lee Carter unseating the republican Majority Whip with zero Democratic support. Carter's already got a fifth of the state House backing a statewide single payer bill, too.

Aside from the usual reasons the DNC sucks at picking winners, its lack of support for various candidates may be because it's broke. Turns out that, for some reason I can't quite put my finger on, people don't seem to want to give their money to the DNC anymore; weird.

This is good news, because it's not like people aren't donating to Democrats; they're just donating directly to campaigns instead of to the DNC.

I'd really rather she do something else. Run for a lower office, start a charity, organize rallies, any number of possibilities besides a longshot attempt to primary a Democratic senator.

She means well but is not choosing the best possible outlet for her activism. This is not the first time something Chelsea Manning has done can be described in those terms, and I suspect it won't be the last.

None of that goes against what Thad said. Thad isn't discounting what she's already done, he's pointing out that she could potentially do more along the same path of political activism by setting her sights a bit to the side.

Krasner immediately instructs prosecutors to stop prosecuting marijuana possession regardless of the weight. Furthermore, he instructed prosecutors to stop charging those with marijuana with any paraphernalia crimes.

Krasner instructed his prosecutors to now add up and justify the exact costs of every single person sentenced to a crime in Philadelphia. Stating that the city is currently spending an astounding $360 million per year to jail around just 6,000 people, Krasner then gave examples of all of the things that such money could be doing in the city currently. Stating that it costs between $42,000 and $60,000 per year to incarcerate a person, he reminded the prosecutors that the average total family income of a person in the city was just $41,000. The annual cost of incarceration, Krasner reminded his prosecutors, was currently more per year than the beginning salary of teachers, police officers, firefighters, social workers, addiction counselors, and even prosecutors in his office.

Krasner wrote, “If you are seeking a sentence of 3 years incarceration, state on the record that the cost to the taxpayer will be $126,000.00 (3 x $42,000.00) if not more and explain why you believe the cost is justified.”

In a ruling that could change the workplace status of people across the state, the California Supreme Court made it harder Monday for employers to classify their workers as independent contractors.

...

To classify someone as an independent contractor, the court said, businesses must show that the worker is free from the control and direction of the employer; performs work that is outside the hirer's core business; and customarily engages in "an independently established trade, occupation or business."

"When a worker has not independently decided to engage in an independently established business but instead is simply designated an independent contractor ... there is a substantial risk that the hiring business is attempting to evade the demands of an applicable wage order through misclassification," Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye wrote for the court.

A worker may be denied the status of employee "only if the worker is the type of traditional independent contractor — such as an independent plumber or electrician — who would not reasonably have been viewed as working in the hiring business," the court said.

Instead, an independent contractor would be understood to be working "in his or her own independent business," Cantil-Sakauye wrote.

The court offered examples: A plumber temporarily hired by a store to repair a leak or an electrician to install a line would be an independent contractor. But a seamstress who works at home to make dresses for a clothing manufacturer from cloth and patterns supplied by the company, or a cake decorator who works on a regular basis on custom-designed cakes would be employees.

This might not necessarily be the right thread or tangent, but my little sister just got back from a summer course at UC: Berkeley (I think. somewhere in california, she's been to so many colleges) for High School kids. They were taking dead cells, turning them into stem cells, and then having those cells repair damaged cells.

I'm realizing as I type it out that I was even more taken aback by it than I thought I was in the moment, because I really did not ask enough questions. But it makes me pretty confident immortality is almost here.

To be honest I don't think immortality is in the cards anytime soon just yet, but we might be on the cusp of being able to provide a middle-age quality of life for people past middle age, maybe gain a few more years.

Stem cells now being at the level of "High School Science Project" is pretty fucking wild though.